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In metrology, measurement uncertainty is the expression of the statistical dispersion of the values attributed to a quantity measured on an interval or ratio scale.. All measurements are subject to uncertainty and a measurement result is complete only when it is accompanied by a statement of the associated uncertainty, such as the standard deviation.
Measurement errors can be divided into two components: random and systematic. [2] Random errors are errors in measurement that lead to measurable values being inconsistent when repeated measurements of a constant attribute or quantity are taken. Random errors create measurement uncertainty. Systematic errors are errors that are not determined ...
If the uncertainties are correlated then covariance must be taken into account. Correlation can arise from two different sources. First, the measurement errors may be correlated. Second, when the underlying values are correlated across a population, the uncertainties in the group averages will be correlated. [1]
In real life applications, both kinds of uncertainties are present. Uncertainty quantification intends to explicitly express both types of uncertainty separately. The quantification for the aleatoric uncertainties can be relatively straightforward, where traditional (frequentist) probability is the most basic form.
These values follow from the properties of the normal distribution, and they apply only if the measurement process produces normally distributed errors. In that case, the quoted standard errors are easily converted to 68.3% ("one sigma "), 95.4% ("two sigma"), or 99.7% ("three sigma") confidence intervals .
For example, if the mean height in a population of 21-year-old men is 1.75 meters, and one randomly chosen man is 1.80 meters tall, then the "error" is 0.05 meters; if the randomly chosen man is 1.70 meters tall, then the "error" is −0.05 meters.
Systematic errors in the measurement of experimental quantities leads to bias in the derived quantity, the magnitude of which is calculated using Eq(6) or Eq(7). However, there is also a more subtle form of bias that can occur even if the input, measured, quantities are unbiased; all terms after the first in Eq(14) represent this bias.
In physical experiments uncertainty analysis, or experimental uncertainty assessment, deals with assessing the uncertainty in a measurement.An experiment designed to determine an effect, demonstrate a law, or estimate the numerical value of a physical variable will be affected by errors due to instrumentation, methodology, presence of confounding effects and so on.